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Must Love Fangs

Midnight Liaisons 3

by

Jessica Sims

For Ilona

Who always offers commentary on how to fix my plots . . . and never gets mad when I ignore her always excellent suggestions. That’s true friendship!

Thanks for being my sounding board for every book.

Chapter One

When I was a child, my father used to let me stay up late to watch movies with him on Saturday nights. My father had stunningly bad taste in movies. His favorite? Mothra vs. Godzilla. I remembered being terrified of the massive, furious creatures that screamed and bellowed as they tore through Tokyo.

Those furious growls and outraged shrieks sounded a bit like what was going on right now in the Midnight Liaisons conference room. No laser beams shooting from eyes, but there was enough snarling to make any human feel on edge.

My boss, Bathsheba Russell, was perched on the corner of my desk, wringing her hands and staring at the front door.

It made it impossible to work, and I shoved my notepad under a stack of papers. “Something I can help with, Bath?”

She glanced over at me, startled, then shook her head. Another round of furious snarls came from the conference room, and she winced as the snarls turned into shouting. “No, I’m sure they’ll be here soon. ”

Well, that was frustrating, and it didn’t bode well for my own plans. I cast an oblique look over at my coworker, Ryder. She widened her eyes and gave me a helpless shrug, as if saying, What can you do?

Sure, Ryder didn’t care if the boss stuck around for an extra hour or two. It wouldn’t derail her night like it’d derail mine.

And I needed this night.

I needed every single day I had left. When you’re dying, you tend to get a little pissy about wasted time.

The front door opened, and just like that, the conference room got quiet.

I could practically hear their shifter ears straining to make out who had just entered. In walked a scowling, lanky young man, hand in hand with a pretty, but frightened, redhead. The girl stared at me fearfully, then looked at Bathsheba as if she’d been about to pounce.

“We’re human,” Bath said in a dry voice. “The ones you need to be scared of are in there. ” She gestured at the now-too-quiet conference room.

The boy braced his shoulders and pulled the woman under his protective arm. She went willingly, her face utterly pale. Poor thing. They marched forward toward the conference room.

“They look like they’re heading to a funeral,” I whispered to Bath.

“They might be,” she whispered back. “Vic wants to kill him. ”

She flushed when the boy paused in front of the conference room and turned to glare at us.

No one said a thing as the conference room door opened. They stepped in. Closed the door. A pause.

And then tempers exploded all over again.

“How dare you turn a human?” roared Vic. The snarl of the tiger alpha’s voice rose above all others. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

“There’s no one for us,” the man shouted back. “There’s no women my age. There’s no women, period!”